Maybe the criticism was even a little — or a lot — unfair.
Following the lead of The Athletic’s Raptor crew, I’ve put together a Maple Leafs club comprised of the men who have elicited the most consternation from fans in the salary cap era.
And we’re going deep here: A general manager, a head coach, 12 forwards, eight D, and three goalies.
Let’s go!
GENERAL MANAGER
John Ferguson Jr.There were reportedly four finalists for the Leafs’ vacant GM job in the summer of 2003: Bob Nicholson, Neil Smith, Steve Tambellini, and a 36-year-old in the St. Louis Blues front office with a famous dad: John Ferguson Jr.
Nicholson and Tambellini were thought to be too close to Pat Quinn, the Leafs coach at the time and soon-to-be ex-GM. Smith was apparently a no-go for Quinn, though. And so, evidently, the Leafs went with Ferguson.
Richard Peddie, the Leafs president at the time, claimed to have canvased the league and asked about upcoming executives. Sound familiar? Except in this case (unlike Brendan Shanahan’s plucking of Kyle Dubas from the OHL years later), Peddie vaulted Ferguson right into the GM’s chair of a team that was doggedly pursuing a Stanley Cup. (Less than a year later, Peddie would hire the similarly inexperienced Rob Babcock to guide the Raptors.)
Skepticism was immediate from both fans and media: Why was a Stanley Cup contender — the last gasp of one anyway — turning things over to a rookie NHL GM?
Ferguson said the organization’s faith in him was “well placed and will be rewarded.” In his first year running the team, Ferguson’s Leafs had 103 points — the best total of the Pat Quinn era — but they would fall short of their Cup goals, losing to Philadelphia in six games in Round 2.
It was all downhill from there.
Following the 2004-05 lost season, the Leafs missed the playoffs in 2005-06. Ferguson then fired Quinn. It wasn’t a popular move with fans, not unlike the Mark Shapiro-Ross Atkins dismissal of John Gibbons with the Blue Jays. According to The Toronto Star’s Ken Campbell, Quinn told those around him that he was effectively gone the day Ferguson replaced him as GM.
But what really agitated fans about JFJ, who promoted Paul Maurice from the Marlies after firing Quinn, was the club’s lack of any apparent direction.
Under Ferguson, the Leafs often paid for past performance, signing past-their-prime stars such as Jason Allison, Eric Lindros, Jason Blake, and Mike Peca. He was also reckless with future assets and struggled to transition to a salary cap league. He also never appeared comfortable operating as the face and voice of the team, which certainly didn’t help matters in a market like Toronto.
Ferguson was fired midway through the 2007-08 season as the Leafs sat 28th in points percentage. (Peddie then named Cliff Fletcher the team’s interim GM, another misfire that would further derail the franchise in other ways.)
It’s worth noting that Ferguson has since gone on to become a valued and respected member of the Boston Bruins front office where he serves as the team’s executive director of player personnel.
HEAD COACH
Randy Carlyle
Under Carlyle, the Leafs often felt like a house of cards waiting to collapse. That they often did kinda proved the point.
Carlyle’s Toronto teams earned an undesirable rep for getting badly out-shot. Looking back now, the numbers are pretty jarring: The Leafs were out-shot by six shots a game in Carlyle’s first full season, eight shots(!) a game in Year 2, and more than five shots a game at the time of his firing in Year 3. During those three seasons, the Leafs ranked 28th, 29th, and 29th (at the time of his dismissal) in expected goals.
Thanks in part to good buddy James Mirtle, who was then at The Globe and Mail, Corsi was filtering into the mainstream. And Carlyle’s teams were the opposite of possession darlings.
What earned the former Leafs coach more ire from fans was his old-school deployment, which often saw two so-called enforcers in the lineup at the same time, as well as a smart, but low-ceiling player like Jay McClement receiving heavy amounts of ice time.
Carlyle’s Leafs did make it to the post-season in the strike-shortened 2013 season, and were a period away from an upset victory over Boston in Round 1. But his tenure came to be defined by the unsustainable strategies he put in place.
It’s what led to the Shanahan-led front office dismissing Carlyle midway through the 2014-15 season, while the Leafs were in a playoff spot, but still getting pummeled in the shots against department.
FORWARDS (12)
David ClarksonA day after they bought out the final four years of Mikhail Grabovski’s five-contract, the Leafs under GM Dave Nonis, signed 29-year-old David Clarkson for seven years and nearly $37 million.
“I’m not worried about (years) six and seven right now,” Nonis said. “I’m worried about one, and year one I know we’re going to have a very good player. I believe that he’s got a lot of good years left in him. He’s not 35-years-old. We never went after an old free agent.”
The now-former Leafs GM added: “If David Clarkson doesn’t score 30 goals in a Leaf uniform, but provides all the other things that we know he’s going to provide, we’re pretty comfortable we’re a better team.”
Those words haven’t aged well.
In fact, they almost immediately blew up in flames as Clarkson leaped off the bench in the preseason to defend Phil Kessel from the monstrous John Scott.
The contract. The preseason brawl. The ensuing automatic 10-game suspension to start his Leafs career. The Wendel Clark comparisons he leaned into (wearing No. 71; Clark’s old No. 17 turned around). It all seemed to build up into pressure Clarkson wasn’t equipped to meet.
Before his Leafs debut in Columbus, Clarkson griped about not being on the team’s top power-play unit. He finished his first season — the Nonis had talked about — with five goals, 11 points, and a 39 percent expected goals mark in 60 games. All while carrying a $5.25 million cap hit.
Things went a teensy bit better in Year 2 with 10 goals and 15 points in 58 games. But by then, with five years still remaining on his deal, the contract was salary cap-destroying disaster for the Leafs.
That they got out of it in February 2015, in exchange for Nathan Horton (physically unable to play again), was a minor miracle for the organization.
In all, over 118 games as a Leaf, Clarkson totaled 15 goals and 26 points.
His contract, which the organization re-acquired last fall as extra security for the Mitch Marner contract negotiations, will finally expire whenever the 2019-20 season comes to an end.
Jason Blake
The final, big problematic move of the JFJ era was bringing Blake aboard on a five-year contract when free agency opened in 2007.
Blake had just scored a career-best 40 goals for the Islanders. But he was also about to turn 34, and those 40 goals came with a huge spike in shooting percentage (13 percent). It reeked of the kind of overpay and over-commitment emblematic of Leaf teams of that era.
Blake did win the Masterton Trophy for playing through a leukeimia diagnosis in his first season, and netted a team-leading 25 goals and 63 points for a bad Leafs team in Year 2. But he was clearly overpaid and on the decline, and eventually sold off to Anaheim, along with another JFJ misfire, Vesa Toskala, in 2010.
Jay McClement
It was a question of usage with McClement.
He looked like a helpful addition when the Leafs signed him as a free agent in 2012, a defensive “stopper” who could kill penalties and defend a lead. Carlyle grew to adore him so much though that things eventually went too far in the old ice-time department. Though he didn’t produce much offence by the second year of his two-year contract — just 10 points in 81 games — McClement still garnered almost 15 minutes a game from the Leafs coach. He played more than 20 minutes 10 times, including one November game against Minnesota worth highlighting in particular.
McClement logged 23 minutes and 37 seconds that night, most among Leafs forwards, and almost eight minutes more than Phil Kessel. Yes, the Leafs had five power plays to kill off, but as the game sheet below indicates, McClement even topped Kessel in even-strength ice-time too.
Nik Antropov
The Antropov story turned around a bit at the end. His final two seasons as a Leaf: 26 goals and 56 points in 72 games, followed by 21 goals and 46 points in 61 games.
But by then it was too late for many fans. A rebuilding squad pioneered by Brian Burke would deal him to the Rangers for a second-round pick.
It’s the early years in Toronto that really frustrated fans when Antropov struggled to live up to sizable expectations that came with being the highest selection by the Leafs (10th overall in 1998) since 1992 when the franchise swung and missed on somebody named Brandon Convery.
Damien Cox in The Toronto Star called Antropov, “the biggest draft gamble in the history of a franchise that has flubbed one draft after another.” Antropov came from obscurity in Kazakhstan, with one anonymous Leafs official telling Cox, “We didn’t think anyone else would have the guts to take him before us.”
Antropov put up a respectable 30 points in 66 games as a 19-year-old rookie. But after that, he had trouble staying on the ice, and producing consistently when he did make it out there. He topped 70 games once in his first seven seasons (returning to St. John’s of the AHL at one point), managing more than 33 points in a season just once. By the 2004 playoffs, he had tumbled to the fourth line, notching just two assists in 13 games that spring.
Antropov had only two goals and five points in 28 playoff games with the Leafs.
On the ice, he was another underachieving high Maple Leafs draft pick. He has since rejoined the Leafs as a skill development consultant.
Phil Kessel
Oh, the infamous trade. One Burke hated to talk about.
“Was it worth it? Was it not worth it? I find it amusing,” the then-president and GM said of the trade aftermath following a 2009-10 season that saw the Leafs finish 29th overall, with their first-round pick already surrendered in the Kessel swap. “Like, I got news for you: We’re all gonna know at some point. This is no different than two farmers side by side arguing whether they plant soybeans or corn. One guy plants soybeans. One guy plants corn. Guess what? We’re gonna know at some point who won! We don’t have to argue the whole time while the plants grow for God’s sake. We’re gonna be able to tell! You’ll all have an answer on this. But in the mean-time, you dissect it to death – ‘It’s too much. It’s not enough.’ And I’m amused by it more than angered by it.”
The answer was clear even then: Burke had misjudged the quality of his team (he claimed to know something was amiss in the preseason when Toskala struggled), sacrificing not only a first-rounder and a second-rounder in 2010, but another one in 2011 that became Dougie Hamilton. (Where were the pick protections???)
It all meant that for a while anyway, Kessel was judged through the lens of the trade. Was he really worth a price as steep as that? Why wasn’t he good enough to push the Leafs higher in the standings?
Kessel actually did his part — sixth in the league in goals per game (0.41) as a Leaf. Management never surrounded him with similar high-level talent though. The best teammate he ever played with in Toronto was….Joffrey Lupul? Tyler Bozak? Dion Phaneuf?
That said, Kessel’s gruff personality, and hit-or-miss work ethic, especially as the face (fairly or not) of Toronto teams that exploded, made him an easy target for fans and media.
He was popular among teammates though:
Colton Orr/Frazer McLaren
It was their impenetrability in the Leafs lineup that frustrated fans, particularly during the 2013 season.
The NHL was already in the early stages of its drift away from fighting, but the Carlyle-led Leafs still insisted on dressing both Orr and McLaren on the fourth line — including in Game 1 of the 2013 playoffs against Boston. McLaren was bumped in Game 2, but Orr suited up in all seven games that spring. He was held without a point. The following summer, the Leafs — now under Nonis — brought Orr and McLaren back on two-year deals, leaning into a style that seemed to be waning.
The two combined to play 82 games for the Leafs over the 2013-14 and 2014-15 seasons, with zero points.
Nazem Kadri
It was hard for anyone in Toronto — fans, media, coaches, teammates, managers — not to like Kadri.
He was bubbly. He was earnest. He had swagger and bite. And he had an interesting set of skills. But there tended to be noise around Kadri, for one reason or another, from the start. For a while, it was off-ice matruity concerns that put his long-term future with the Leafs into real question. Kadri ultimately grew into the kind of edgy centre who could score and defend that Burke envisioned when he picked Kadri seventh overall in 2009.
But after earning lengthy, ill-advised suspensions early in playoff series against the Bruins in both 2018 and ’19 — ones that arguably cost the Leafs the series, he scuffed up a nice redemption story.
It speaks to his popularity that his suspension is often the third, fourth or, even fifth factor (Jake Gardiner, Frederik Andersen, Mike Babcock, not enough skill!) mentioned when talk of those two series comes up.
Tim Connolly
No. 1 centre!!!
Granted he was Plan B after missing out on Brad Richards in free agency that summer, the hope at the time was that Connolly could be the much-needed, much-talked, about first-line centre for Kessel.
It never worked out. Playing on a two-year contract, Connolly was injured before his first season got underway. And though he returned to play alongside Kessel, there were no sparks. He ended up with only 36 points in 70 games, with a not-so-nice 46 percent expected goals mark and a sub-49 percent faceoff mark. Not great for a $4.75 million cap hit. Definitely not the No. 1 centre Burke was hoping for.
Connolly was Marlie-bound at age 31 when the 2012-13 lockout came to an end. That was the last anyone heard of him.
Tyler Bozak
Bozak arrived on the scene before Connolly — and became one of the few (only?) college lottery tickets that later worked out great for the Burke-led Leafs. But it was during Bozak’s first full season that the No. 1 centre expectation noise got loud. Bozak had only 32 points in 82 games that year despite playing with Kessel and logging over 19 minutes per game.
Bozak came around after that, evolving into a dependable complement (and spokesman) for Kessel, a valued leader, faceoff guru, and power-play smarty. The ill-placed talk of him as a No. 1 centre eventually quieted down after the franchise landed a kid named Auston Matthews.
Patrick Marleau
Half contract, half usage.
It may have been the only way to pry him out of San Jose, but giving Marleau a third year on his free-agent deal in the summer of 2017, at a pricey $6.25 million on the cap, was always going to be dicey. He was close to 38 when Lamoriello brought him in, and the Leafs would soon have extremely healthy raises to pay their young core.
But it was during the 2019 playoffs when Maple Leafs fans’ ire for him peaked.
During that regular season, the 39-year-old finished with only 37 points — then his fewest in a full season since he was an 18-year-old rookie in San Jose. Babcock continued to lean on him in the post-season anyway, deploying Marleau on a William Nylander-centered line even as the series rolled along and Marleau struggled to get much done offensively.
He had one shot or less in five of the seven games against Boston.
(It’s fair to question Babcock, though it also seems right to ask who should have played in Marleau’s place. Kadri was suspended. Trevor Moore was a rookie. Tyler Ennis may have been stretched too far with a promotion. If anything, it was the other puzzle pieces that probably needed rearranging.)
Otherwise, Marleau was adored by teammates and likable for his quiet, persistent approach to the game.
Of course, the contract did come back to the bite the Leafs in the end — with a first-round pick being sacrificed to Carolina to get that last year off the books. Fans will likely have mixed feelings about the brief Marleau era.
Joffrey Lupul
It was always a question of health with Lupul, who was acquired in a laudable trade with Anaheim that also landed the Leafs Jake Gardiner and sent Francois Beauchemin back to the Ducks.
When he did play and was feeling it, Lupul could be a force:
It looked like the Leafs really had something when they hooked Lupul up with Kessel during the 2011-12 season. He put up a point per game (67 in 66) that year and earned an invite to the All-Star Game.
But Lupul was always dealing with an injury. A groin. A bruised foot. A knee issue. A broken arm from a Phaneuf misfire. A broken hand after he fell on his stick at practice. Sports hernia surgery. Surgery on his knee.
Not long after the lockout ended in 2013, the Leafs gave Lupul a five-year extension. He suited up 69 times in Year 1 of the deal, 55 in Year 2, 46 in Year 3, and then he was gone — mysteriously disappearing after a series of failed physicals.
DEFENCE (8)
Mike KomisarekThe headliner of Burkeapalooza in the summer of 2009, Komisarek was probably doomed from the start by expectations — belligerence! pugnacity! — and of course, that contract: five years and $21.5 million.
If only analytics were a larger part of the calculus for management back then. In his last year with the Canadiens, Komisarek posted a 45 percent expected goals mark, and he may have been propped up by his defence partner, Andrei Markov. He was also approaching 30 and lacked speed in a game that was only getting faster.
Komisarek seemed determined to live up to the truculent expectations right away, racking up 15 penalty minutes opposite his old Montreal teammates in his Leafs debut.
His fight snowballed from there.
The Leafs were outscored 10-2 in October when he was on the ice 5-on-5. Fans got on him. He pressed more. Shoulder surgery ended his season in January.
Though he was still among the higher-paid players on the team, Komisarek fell to third pair in his second year with the Leafs. He was a Marlie by the time the lockout-shortened 2013 season rolled around and was finally bought out that summer.
Jake Gardiner
The errors could be glaring. And after Game 7 in 2018, when Gardiner stepped up and took the blame for the Leafs defeat, everything else positive Gardiner had produced was largely (and unfortunately) drowned out.
He’s the most polarizing, but legitimately good, player the Leafs have had in recent memory outside of, and maybe even including, Kadri.
One corner of the fanbase is convinced that Gardiner is not all his supporters make him out to be, and that his mistakes are indeed a fatal flaw. Others dig (not even all that deep) into the analytics and find a incredibly useful defenceman, a one-man breakout who drives play the right way.
For the non-believers, consider a very basic fact: Over the last three seasons of Gardiner’s lengthy tenure in Toronto, when the teams were talented, the Leafs outscored teams by 58 goals when Gardiner was on the ice in 5-on-5 situations.
Oddly enough, in the beginning, it was the #FreeJake Gardiner campaign that started the debate around him. He was held to only 12 games during the 2013 regular season and he was benched for Game 1 of the playoffs.
He then stacked up five points in the remaining six games of the series while logging over 23 minutes a night.
Bryan McCabe
The positive narrative surrounding McCabe seemed to change near the end of the 2004, a season that saw him finish fourth in Norris Trophy voting.
In Game 5 of their second-round playoff series against the Flyers, McCabe played almost 26 minutes but was on the ice for six of seven Philadelphia goals. And he was out there for two of Philadelphia’s three goals in the decisive Game 6, including as the last man back when Jeremy Roenick ended things in OT:
Then came the own goal, which really shouldn’t have morphed into as big of a focal point as did. It was October, for one thing, and just one game of 82 for a mediocre team that missed the playoffs by more than a few points.
Part of it was money.
Prior to the 2006-07 season, McCabe had signed a five-year deal worth almost $30 million. And although he would deliver 15 goals and 57 points the first year of that contract, he would fall on hard times after that before finally being dealt to Florida for Mike van Ryn just prior to the 2008-09 season.
Never the most cerebral player, he came to be defined — rather unfairly — by the own goal.
But as one of the pillars of the Leaf teams that veered deepest into the post-season in recent memory, McCabe should be remembered for a lot more than that, and undoubtedly as one of the better Leafs of the last 25 years.
Nikita Zaitsev
Contracts, contracts, contracts.
In a cap world, it’s often about the contract. And for Zaitsev, his second NHL contract — seven long years, with a $4.5 million annual cap hit — topped anything he could possibly offer on the ice.
Babcock liked to point out that Zaitsev was better than most thought, the best the Leafs had on defence at separating man from puck. Maybe if Zaitsev’s cut of the pie had been a mere $2.5-3 million, he would have been more appreciated by fans for that stuff.
He was right around the 50 percent mark in expected goals as a Leaf, even though he was buried in the defensive zone, primarily against gruelling competition.
But on a team where every dollar counts, Zaitsev was never going to be able to overcome his contract in the eyes of fans. And not without merit. That the Leafs managed to extricate themselves from that deal last summer with no long-term penalty, is no small feat.
Dion Phaneuf
It’s possible, maybe even likely, that on a different – a.k.a. better – team, Phaneuf wouldn’t have attracted anywhere near the same amount of attention and fury as he ultimately did in Toronto. Had he been asked to be the second or third best defenceman on the Leafs (and paid as such), and not one of the faces of the team alongside Kessel, he likely would have enjoyed more success, and as a result, popularity.
Instead, Phaneuf proved to be overexposed as the No. 1 D in Toronto, particularly under Carlyle. It’s difficult to separate Phaneuf’s underlying numbers in those years from the schemes and strategies of his coach, but either way, they weren’t pretty. What they seemed to reveal was a defenceman ill-equipped to do the primary job that was asked of him — to slow down top lines. Nor did he bring much offence to the table. Which meant that he didn’t meet the job description of No. 1 defencemen, nor the compensation that comes with it.
The day before the 2014 Winter Classic in Ann Arbor, Mich., the Leafs gave their captain a seven-year extension with a rich $7 million cap hit. That put Phaneuf among the highest-paid defenders in the game when the contract kicked off in the 2014-15 season.
Still, at least some of the ire that came Phaneuf’s way was misplaced. It really should have been laid at the feet of management – starting with Burke and ending with Nonis. Phaneuf wasn’t suited for the public-facing aspect of the captaincy, which matters more in Toronto than it might in other markets. That mattered all the more because the other guy who might have shared some of that load – Kessel – shied away from it entirely.
Phaneuf was rightly panned for his role in Salutegate. Whether a planned or impromptu reaction to fans’ frustration, Phaneuf, as captain, could and should have, prevented it from happening.
He did work hard at practice, in the gym, and during games — setting as much of the tone as he could, that way. He was looked up to by younger players, and made a real effort at bringing them along. Morgan Rielly has raved about Phaneuf’s mentorship. But as is the case with many of the names on this list, Phaneuf’s place in Leafs history – and in the minds of both fans and media – is complicated by the messy state of the organization for nearly all of his tenure.
Tomas Kaberle
He’s undeniably one of the best players the Leafs have ever produced, an eighth-round pick who has more points than any Leafs defenceman not names Borje Salming.
Still, what often irked fans over Kaberle’s 12 years with the team was an unwillingness to let ‘er rip from the point. Kaberle was the opposite of Tyson Barrie, firing only as a last resort. That was especially true during Kaberle’s early years (before the 2004-05 lockout) when he was sometimes averaging not much more than a shot per game — including 82 shots in 82 games as an NHL sophomore.
“Shoot!” fans in attendance at the Air Canada Centre would scream as Kaberle hung onto the puck during a power play.
The question now is whether those concerns were overblown.
Were the Leafs hurt by Kaberle’s reluctance to shoot? Probably a little. But it also seemed like a grievance very much of the time, when stats — and the thinking they induced — were far less advanced than they are today.
Gardiner, for instance, averaged fewer shots for his Leafs career (1.43) than Kaberle (1.5), but rarely, if ever, did Gardiner’s unwillingness to shoot brew into anything of consequence.
Like Gardiner, Kaberle was knocked for not putting his 200-plus pound frame to work defensively. Unlike Gardiner, for most of Kaberle’s Leafs career there were no possession stats kicking around to suggest he was doing more good than harm.
Roman Polak
Babcock probably had this one right, looking back now.
The former Leafs coach took some heat for his devotion to Polak over the years. Polak was heavy, tough and determined. He was a man, as Babcock liked to say. There was the time, for instance, during the last-place 2015-16 season, when Polak took a puck to the face, got stitched up, and returned to set up a goal.
And so while he didn’t move the puck that well, he brought a punch the Leafs lacked otherwise. Though he started a large portion of shifts in the defensive zone, Polak ended up right around 50 percent expected goals in his final two seasons with the Leafs. Not bad, in other words.
If the Leafs did really intend to sign Finger for four years and $14 million on the first day of free agency in 2008 (and not Kurt Sauer as some have speculated), the question of why remains just as unclear today as it was back then.
Finger was 28 going on 29 at that point. He’d played only 94 games in the league and was even scratched in some playoff games that spring for Colorado. “Me and my agent were joking when we sent the contract to the (Players’ Association). They were like: ‘Who’s this guy?’ I kind of laughed,” Finger told The Star’s Kevin McGran at the time. “I’m sure a lot of people are wondering who I am and what I’m about.”
Then-Leafs coach Ron Wilson boasted that Finger was the most improved defenceman in the Western Conference. He’d play the hard minutes, kill penalties, be “tough and mean” around the net.
“We feel he has tremendous upside and has potential,” then-interim GM Cliff Fletcher said of Finger in conversation with Tim Wharnsby of The Globe and Mail.
Finger did block some shots and chewed up 20 minutes a game in Year 1 while playing primarily with a 19-year-old Luke Schenn. In his second season with the Leafs, Finger suited up just 39 times while playing under 14 minutes a night.
The final two years of Finger’s four-year deal were spent with the Marlies.
GOALIE (3)
Andrew Raycroft
“We paid a good price, but we understood that we had to move something of value in order to get this player.”
The player was Andrew Raycroft and the price John Ferguson Jr. was referring to in conversation with The Star was prized goalie prospect, and the team’s No. 1 pick a year earlier, Tuukka Rask.
It’s still confounding all these years later how that became the price the Leafs GM agreed to pay for Raycroft. Any trade value Raycroft had previously built up should have been gone by the summer of 2006. The season that earned him the Calder Trophy — highlighted by a .926 save percentage — had been the one before the 2004-05 lockout. In the new world that had followed, Raycroft’s numbers had crumbled. In 2005-06 he went 8-19-2, with an .879 save percentage for Boston. How could he possibly have fetched an opposing team’s No. 1 prospect?
Yes, Justin Pogge, the Leafs’ third-round pick in 2004, looked to be on the rise as well as the WHL MVP and goalie of the year in the CHL. But Rask had just completed a sterling season himself as an 18-year-old in the Finnish league (.926). Even if you thought Pogge might be the future, that still doesn’t explain why Rask would be the acquisition cost for someone like Raycroft.
So why not keep both?
Fans were rightly frustrated when Raycroft flailed as the Leafs No. 1. (He did temporarily match the franchise record for wins!) The wound stung even more as Rask developed into a star. All told, the Leafs got 91 games of subpar netminding from Raycroft. The Bruins have gotten more than 500 games and counting from Rask, including a Vezina Trophy, plus 50 wins in the post-season and a Stanley Cup.
Not good.
Vesa Toskala
Also not good: spending more quality assets to gamble on yet another goalie one year — almost to the day! — after the Raycroft/Rask swap.
At the outset of draft weekend in Columbus in 2007, Ferguson surrendered picks No. 13 (which became Lars Eller) and 44 (Aaron Palushaj), along with a fourth-round selection in 2009 (Craig Smith) for Toskala, a 30-year-old who had been No. 2 to Evgeni Nabokov in San Jose, and a declining Mark Bell.
Toskala had a strong start to his career with the Sharks, posting a .929 save percentage in 39 games over his first two seasons. In his first year after the lockout, his save percentage dipped to .901. It was .908 the season before the Leafs acquired him.
Does that sound like a No. 1 goalie?
Before he even played a game for them, the Leafs awarded Toskala — who still had another year remaining on his current deal — a 2 yr extension with a $4 million cap hit.
He started 64 games in his debut season, but unfortunately for the Leafs, and their frustrated fans, he was only a slight upgrade over Raycroft, finishing the year tied for 25th in save percentage (.904) among those that started at least 40 games.
There were regrettable moments. And Toskala, a laid-back and easygoing fellow, didn’t seem to possess the Jack Campbell gene for accountability when talking with the media.
In Year 2 — when his new contract kicked in — the wheels came off entirely as his save percentage plummeted to .891.
He was also failing to keep the puck out in shootouts, which led to then-coach Wilson, in an almost unbelievable sequence of events, replacing him with 41-year-old Curtis Joseph for a shootout against Anaheim:
Toskala fell even further in year three (.874) and was finally shipped off with Blake to Anaheim for Jean-Sebastien Giguere.
Jonathan Bernier
In a different universe, the Jonathan Bernier experience in 2013-14 might have worked out better. It’s easy to forget now, in light of how the Leafs fell apart that season, but Bernier was actually a top-tier goalie when he first arrived from the L.A. Kings.
And Bernier was prone to give up a bad goal, which didn’t endear him to fans during a rocky time for the organization:
Another collapse by the Leafs — Bernier included — in the 2014-15 season only made for more sour feelings.
When Babcock came aboard the following season, all he seemed to see was how small Bernier — listed at 6-feet, 185 pounds — was. Not the goalie to lead his team into the future. Not long after the Leafs got that guy the following summer — trading for Andersen, a relative giant in comparison at 6-foot-4, 230 pounds — Bernier was dealt to Anaheim for future considerations.
He’s been a reliable 1B type ever type since.
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